


What's in the Cards

by Domimagetrix



Category: No Fandom
Genre: #On the Veins of Stitched Leaves, Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Gen, Gruff Old Man - Freeform, Mention of Hunting/Trapping Animals, Tyrkovanii Homebrew OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: Taavik is about to set out to settle an old debt, perhaps to make peace both with himself and his chosen deity. Before he can leave, however, he is visited by his neighbor.(A small pre-campaign-beginning fic for my character in this absolutely dope D&D campaign. I love these two and there is also art in the future. And there's a playlist. I am invested.)





	What's in the Cards

Despite prominent eaves, ashfall accumulated on the windows of Taavik’s hut with too much tenacity for his liking. Moisture made it particularly insidious, ensuring a need to excavate the outside panes from the mess every two days rather than the customary dry-weather five.

It collected on his mask, too. To leave it on the mesh against either side of his neck was to suffocate; to paw it off an exercise in mindless - but necessary - repetition. It transferred to his gloves and made his grip on the scraper uncertain.

The edge of the tool caught a muntin, the former wrested with the force of his pull from hand to the ash-snow mixture at his feet. Taavik crouched with a curse to snatch it and straightened again. A glare at the last pane offered a lonely transparent arc interrupting the otherwise opaque gray muck, mocking him.

“Ayuh, ‘course y’would. Won’t be here fah a bit, goin’ citybound to pay and be paid, but you’re going to be a right burr in my hide and no matter I might not see your miserable, mismeasured self again.” Taavik swiped at the glass with the side of his hand, smearing light gray crud into semi-translucence. He scowled at the residue on his glove. “Damned shit.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it would suffice. Poot had agreed to keep an eye on the place, applying scraper and broom as weather demanded, while Taavik went about his business in Circuit. Wouldn’t do to leave the puzzling old coot chores to do from the offset.

There was a chance this exercise would be Taavik’s last in this place. Age had been a strange mixture of kind and cruel to him, weathering some parts viciously but leaving him hearty enough to lead a solitary life post-divorce. He caught his own, and could still wing down the hill to the settlement and tend the ill there, but he was no fool. Fifty-five was a goodish number of years. He hadn’t applied moderation to the drink for most of them. Whatever employment he found would replace the savings soon delivered to the hand of an old benefactor, and might prove his final act among the living.

He harrumphed and stepped carefully around to the front of his hut, knocking clumps of the Pale Expanse’s irritating staple from his feet while mounting the steps. Long thoughts afforded him an artificial, momentary daring.

“Be Moradin’s own job I’d expire among city slickers.” He cast a glance around the gentle decline of his front yard, speaking as though the deity listened from somewhere nearby. “You heard me.”

And Moradin might, at that. Taavik had made a mess of his marriage, a bigger mess of his relationship with his son. Chosen, of all places, this irregular exclamation point-shaped tract of land to build his hermit’s home, distant from his community save for the enduring mystery of Poot. The too-likely image of breathing a rarified last among city folk sat like a bitter weight in his chest, but he’d have none to blame for it but himself if his patron divinity found the irony - and the comeuppance - too tempting to ignore.

They might bury him. _Bury._

Attended by strangers, too. He felt a pang of regret for his outburst. There was no response in sound or mind from the patron of his life’s path, and he didn’t know whether to indulge in relief or worry at it.

With another quick cast of his gaze around his property, he turned and worked open the door, rolling gloves off and leaving them inside-out on a shelf next to him. The coat went next, hung over a grate in the floor where ashy sludge would melt and drip into a tub beneath. Lastly came the mask, dumped unceremoniously next to the gloves, and he made his way to the tiny nook servicing as a kitchen. He stood at the sink and washed goo from beneath his claws.

A wooden knock made him jump. Taavik tapped a lever with a now-clean claw, cutting off the flow of water, and took quick stock of the state of his hands. Returning to the door, he flung droplets from them to nowhere in particular and opened it to reveal Poot.

Poot was large. That was to say, there was an impressive amount of Poot to be had.

Poot took up the entire view outside the door.

Whereas Taavik enjoyed a nodding acquaintanceship with preening and self-care, Poot was intimately familiar. His hide looked the part in both clarity and smoothness. Tawny feathers, however, refused to acknowledge any such an effort, one in every five standing in whichever direction took its fancy. Some - most, maybe - could be attributed to the scarred terrain beneath, but not all.

Taavik was grizzled, ruffled-looking on his worst day. Poot looked like he tested electrical currents by licking them.

Taavik’s visitor peered down with sprightly yellow eyes. Though the mask obscured most of the lower half of his face and much of his neck, cloth draping over his crest, there were signs enough of a smile. He stood there and exuded his aura of endless patience.

Silently.

_One day you’re goin’ tah “hello” and I’ll collapse dead on the floor from shock._

Taavik stepped back, waving the frayed-looking mass of his neighbor in. “C’mon, then.” He watched Poot accept the invitation, the behemoth of a Tyrkovan ducking slightly while entering and pulling his mask off. Poot held it idly at his side, offering an unveiled version of his smile.

Still silently.

Taavik squinted up at him as he closed the door. “Early by a half an hour, I’d wager. Good.” He walked toward the little hearth and Poot followed, a massive, amicable presence with seemingly no desire to offer a word in edgewise. Turning again, Taavik waved a hand in an aimless gesture around the interior of his home. “I’ll keep it brief. Y’know I plan to be gone fah a bit.”

Poot nodded, disturbing the already irregular spray of deeper brown feathers in his crest. He reached a hand into a pocket of his ash-dusted jacket, withdrawing a pair of fabric somethings as his neighbor went on.

“Y’know I’m of no adventurin’ age, too. Ha’ent been much beyond hereabouts.” Taavik made a self-conscious sound. “Might not make it _back_ to hereabouts before… Poot, what the hell are those?”

The abrupt course change didn’t seem to perturb or even surprise Poot. In answer, he extended his hand and offered the mystery items to Taavik.

Taavik accepted them and lifted one tightly-woven tube by the open end. It wasn’t straight but angled, jutting off two-thirds of the way down as though crafted in deference to a permanently bent extremity of some sort. Not a hand - no place for digits. It looked useless for covering, even less practical as a pouch.

He wiggled it. “You’d be awed at how little this tells me, Poot. What’s it fah?”

Poot reached again into the pocket and drew out a second pair. Shaking them, he slid one over the long stalk of his right ear with his free hand, then repeated the process for his left ear with the other. The angled portions hung loosely from each tip, giving him an absurdly dejected appearance in contrast with his wordless grin.

He wiggled his ears in counterpoint to each other. The ends of the tubes flip-flopped with the motions.

Taavik exploded in laughter. “You… that… _Poot!”_

Delight was swiftly absorbed into his earlier train of thought, melancholy now painful with this reminder of what he was leaving behind. No more navigating familiar, ash-strewn paths and bringing visitors to their destinations. No more silent mornings spent with a hot cup of broth and his few old books. No more visits from this benign giant, for whom words either held little import or little interest, his prying visits something Taavik had come to accept as part of the other’s peculiar investment in him.

It seemed the change in mood wasn’t lost on Poot. His grin fell carefully into a more solemn expression as he plucked the oddities from his ear tips and returned them to their coat pocket.

Taavik scraped together the remnants of his purpose and began again. “Might be I don’t come back. If’n I don’t…” his hand rose and gestured again at the small interior of the living area, “...she’s no beauty. Guttahs need tah be replaced. But she’s yours fah all the good it’ll do you. Same of all she carries inside. Good set of copper pots under’t sink-”

Poot raised his hand in a gesture to cease. Taavik ceased. The gesture became a point at the little tubes of fabric held in Taavik’s hand and Poot spoke. “Comfort and kindness are the coin of any realm.”

No gesture was needed for Taavik to continue holding his peace. After many years of long silences or monosyllabic contributions to their conversations, this was a veritable speech coming from Poot. It also highlighted a crisp accent as unfamiliar to Taavik’s ear as Poot’s coloration was to their little corner of the Expanse.

Taavik looked down at the pair of gifts, then back at the giver.

Poot nodded, letting his hand fall to his side. “Be kind to yourself in the coming days. Bond with a few in the city. Make friends.” He pointed to the disarray above his forehead. “A few feathers off your head. There’s adventure in store for you, and you’ll be carrying enough without bringing that burden of guilt along for the ride. Don’t travel alone. Find a true peace with your Moradin in good companionship.”

An odd sensation prickle-crawled beneath Taavik’s own crest. He’d just finished a book detailing the adventures of a young woman, one who’d been on a quest to seek the deity of her forefathers to obtain great wisdom. She’d begun her trek from home, same as Taavik intended to do this very afternoon, with an elder in her community offering similarly cryptic, astute-sounding observations before her departure. By the end of the novel, she’d found the god of her people, and discovered him to be the very same wizened fellow who’d equipped her with sage advice in the beginning.

Merely an eccentric, beloved by the denizens of that town, never suspected to be anything more than an aging wise man and fellow countryman.

Taavik reconsidered Poot.

_Absolutely nonsense. That is fantasy. This is Poot._

A sense of the profound still weighed in the room despite the thought.

_He keeps squirrels as pets. SQUIRRELS._

That did a bit more to dispel the feeling.

Hanging on the wall between sets of rough-hewn, wooden spits, a squirrel skull stared blankly out at them with hollow eye sockets, accusing. Taavik started as Poot reached out and tapped the bone lightly with a curled finger in mimic of Taavik’s own habit, speaking again. “Bring him when you go. And I’d hear his story. A tale shared before setting off for parts unknown brings good travel winds.”

Taavik scratched idly at a patch on his arm. “Always been more fah readin’ a tale, Poot, not tellin’ one.”

Poot offered him a patient, silent smile in response.

_Fine._

“Were six months I fought with this one.” Taavik took a turn rapping on the skull’s head, letting his mind drift from present to the past. “S’back before I fixed the fascia under the guttahs. Fuzzy bastard made his way in, didn’t have the godsbefucked courtesy to build a nest and go on about it in peace upstairs, and found my kitchen.”

Despite himself, Taavik felt a slow smile spread across his face. “Never settled tah purloin from the food stocks, either, never think it! Was a summoned devil, still think so tah this day. Turned his little nose up at my larder and busied himself in my herbs and tinctures. Had a nose for the good stuff, he did, too. Never a cheap net ah wildroots. Nunya common stuff. He made his beeline for that’s cost me too dear and comes too small for the price.”

He turned his attention to Poot. “S’one cold-weather day I caught him up on that very shelf.” He pointed back toward the nook and the shelf above the sink, Poot casting his gaze that way in interest as Taavik went on. “Perched right up there, pretty as you please and twice as fuzzy. Paws ‘rount the top of a glass bottle of that pixie-flower what goes into the stuff I use to ease mah joints. Holdin’ it over the side, like.”

Taavik aimed a meaning-pregnant stare at Poot. “He was gnawin’ on the cork, but those beady little eyes bored intah mine like a pair of assholes from the pits of the Nine.” He extended two fingers and pointed at his own eyes for his audience’s benefit. “Tellin’ me tah fuck m’self, so he was, and nary a word. Then.”

Taavik paused. Poot inclined himself inward and down, his own expression intent. Taavik nooded. _“Then._ He let his little arms go wide, and the damned bottle crashes all over the floor. Bits and pieces everywhichway. Never took his eyes off’n me. _The bastard.”_

Poot screech-bellowed laughter. His arms went around his coated middle and he rocked, each laugh punctuated by a helpless wheeze.

Taavik grinned. “Ayuh, so Fuzzy Bastard he was. Chased him high and low over t’house until he got incautious and landed in a trap. Weren’t even slow, but knocked himself out cold on the side.”

Poot struggled visibly and audibly to get himself under control. Once he could speak, his words were few. “And then?”

Another knock on the skull. “Meet Basil BrothBone. Broth itself was thin, but the bones were fine crunching.”

This time, both screeched laughter into Taavik’s living room. It’d been some time, but despite that Taavik himself was quite sure the whole debacle was funnier for having told it to someone else.

It was a curious feeling. And a good one.

Once they’d sobered somewhat, Poot redonned his mask and made his way toward the front door. Taavik walked with him, pausing as Poot’s hand went to the handle and stilled.

He seemed forlorn to Taavik as he spoke. “Your house will be well-tended in your absence, but it will be empty without you.”

Taavik wavered between embarrassment and the awareness that he should respond, but Poot offered no time for it. With a wrench, his neighbor opened the door and made his exit.

Taavik himself closed the door behind Poot, moving to a newly-cleaned window and watching the impressive bulk of his… friend… make way through the uneven drifts toward his own shack on the other side of the little elevation. Once he’d spied lantern light through the window, he moved away and set to packing for the journey ahead.

Passing the wall where his skewers rested, he eyed Basil, then reached out and plucked the necklace string from the nail on which it hung and donned the sole trophy from his half-year’s battle with Fuzzy Bastard.

_“Bring him when you go.”_

Odd thing to insist upon, but Poot was nothing if not a connoisseur of the curious. Taavik took a final inspection of his humble home, nodded his satisfaction to himself, and rapped the top of Basil as he made his way toward the door.

“Don’t rightly know what’s in the cards, old boy, but we ante up. Ayuh, that we do.” Taavik opened the door, stood on the porch, closing up behind himself.

  


………

  


From his own front window, Poot watched his troubled old friend’s silhouette disappear into the ash-infused snow, worry tumbling slowly in his breast.


End file.
